by L. J. Smith
Who would do such a thing? Elena cried. I’ll make him wish he’d never been born. Tell me who’s going to do this!
The child’s face was sad and perplexed. I will, he said sadly. He will. He/I. Damon. Because we’ll have killed you.
But if it’s not his fault…
We have to. We have to. But maybe I’ll die, the doctor says… There was a definite lilt of hope in the last sentence.
It decided Elena. If Damon was not thinking clearly, then maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly, she reasoned out slowly. Maybe…maybe she should do what Sage wanted.
And Dr. Meggar. She could discern his voice as if through a thick fog. “—sake, you’ve been working all night. Give someone else a chance.”
Yes…all night. Elena had not wanted to wake up again, and she had a powerful will.
“Maybe switch sides?” someone—a girl—a young girl—was suggesting. Little in voice, but strong-willed, too. Bonnie.
“Elena…It’s Meredith. Can you feel me holding your hand?” A pause, then very much louder, excitedly, “Hey, she squeezed my hand! Did you see? Sage, tell Damon to get in here quick.”
Drifting…
“…drink a little more, Elena? I know, I know, you’re sick of it. But drink un peu for my sake, will you?”
Drifting…
“Très bon, mon enfant! Maintenant, what about a little milk? Damon believes you can stay human if you drink some milk.”
Elena had two thoughts about this. One was that if she drank any more of anything, she might explode. Another was that she wasn’t going to make any foolish promises.
She tried to speak but it came out in a thread of a whisper. “Tell Damon—I won’t come up unless he lets the little boy free.”
“Who? What little boy?”
“Elena, sweetie, all the little boys on this estate are free.”
Meredith: “Why not let her tell him?”
Dr. Meggar: “Elena, Damon is right here on the couch. You’ve both been very sick, but you’re going to be fine. Here, Elena, we can move the examination table so you can talk to him. There, it’s done.”
Elena tried to open her eyes, but everything was ferociously bright. She took a breath and tried again. Still much too bright. And she didn’t know how to dim her vision anymore. She spoke with her eyes shut to the presence she felt in front of her: I can’t leave him alone again. Especially if you’re going to load him with chains and gag him.
Elena, Damon said shakily, I haven’t led a good life. But I haven’t kept slaves before, I swear. Ask anyone. And I wouldn’t do that to a child.
You have, and I know his name. And I know that all he’s made of is gentleness, and kindness, and good nature…and fear.
The low rumble of Sage’s voice, “…agitating her…” the slightly louder murmur of Damon’s: “I know she’s off her head, but I’d still like to know the name of this little boy I’m supposed to have done this to. How does that agitate her?”
More rumbling, then: “But can’t I just ask her? At least I can clear my name of these charges.” Then, out loud: “Elena? Can you tell me what child I’m supposed to have tortured like this?”
She was so tired. But she answered aloud, whispering, “His name is Damon, of course.”
And Meredith’s own exhausted whisper, “Oh, my God. She was willing to die for a metaphor.”
30
Matt watched Mrs. Flowers go over Sheriff Mossberg’s badge, holding it lightly in one hand and running her fingers over it with the other.
The badge came from Rebecca, Sheriff Mossberg’s niece. It had seemed entirely a coincidence when Matt had almost run into her earlier that day. Then he’d noticed that she was wearing a man’s shirt as a dress. The shirt had been familiar—a Ridgemont sheriff’s shirt.
Then he had seen the badge still attached to it. You could say a lot of things about Sheriff Mossberg, but you couldn’t imagine him losing his badge. Matt had forgotten all sense of gallantry and snatched at the little metal shield before Rebecca could stop him. He’d had a sick feeling in his stomach then, and it had only gotten worse since. Mrs. Flowers’s expression was doing nothing to comfort him.
“It wasn’t in direct contact with his skin,” she said softly, “so the images I get are hazy. But oh, my dear Matt”—she lifted shadowed eyes to his—“I am afraid.” She shivered, sitting at her kitchen table chair, where two mugs of hot spiced milk sat untouched.
Matt had to clear his throat and touch the scalding milk to his lips. “You think we need to go out to look.”
“We must,” said Mrs. Flowers. She shook her head, with its soft, wispy white curls, sadly. “Dear Mama is most insistent, and I can feel it too; a great disturbance in this artifact.”
Matt felt the faintest shade of pride tingeing his fear for having secured the “artifact”—and then he thought, yeah, robbing badges from the shirts of twelve-year-old girls is really something to be proud of.
Mrs. Flowers’s voice came from the kitchen. “You’d best put on several shirts and sweaters as well as a pair of these.” She emerged sideways through the kitchen door, holding several long coats, apparently from the closet in front of the kitchen door, and several pairs of gardening gloves.
Matt jumped up to help her with the armfuls of coats and then went into a coughing fit as the smell of mothballs and of—something else, something spicy—surrounded him.
“Why do—I feel—like Christmas?” he said, forced to cough between each few words.
“Oh, now that would be Great-Aunt Morwen’s clove preservation recipe,” Mrs. Flowers replied. “Some of these coats are from Mother’s time.”
Matt believed her. “But it’s still warm out. Why should we wear coats at all?”
“For protection, dear Matt, for protection! These clothes have spells woven into the material to safeguard us from evil.”
“Even the gardening gloves?” Matt asked doubtfully.
“Even the gloves,” Mrs. Flowers said firmly. She paused and then said in a quiet voice, “And we’d better gather some flashlights, Matt dear, because this is something we’re going to have to do in the darkness.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, sadly, I am not. And we should get some rope to tie ourselves together. Under no circumstances must we enter the thicket of the Old Wood tonight.”
An hour later, Matt was still thinking. He hadn’t had any appetite for Mrs. Flowers’s hearty Braised Eggplant au Fromage dinner, and the wheels in his brain just wouldn’t stop turning.
I wonder if this is how Elena feels, he thought, when she’s putting together Plans A, B, and C. I wonder if she ever feels this stupid doing it.
He felt a tightening around his heart, and for the three-hundred-thousandth time since he’d left her and Damon, he wondered if he’d done the right thing.
It had to be right, he told himself. It hurt the worst, and that’s the proof of it. Things that really, really hurt are the right thing to do.
But I just wanted to say good-bye to her….
But if you’d said good-bye, you’d never have left. Face it, moron, as far as Elena goes you’re the world’s biggest loser. Ever since she found a boyfriend she liked better than you, you’ve been working like you were Meredith and Bonnie to help her keep him and keep away The Bad Guy. Maybe you should get you all little matching T-shirts saying: I am a dog. I serve the Princess Ele—
SMACK!
Matt leaped up, and landed crouching, which was more painful than it looked in movies.
Rattle-Smick!
It was the loose shutter on the other side of the room. That first bang had really been a slam, though. The exterior of the boardinghouse was in pretty bad shape, and the wooden shutters there sometimes suddenly came free of their wintertime nails.
But was it really just a coincidence? Matt thought, as soon as his heart had stopped galloping. In this boardinghouse where Stefan had spent so much time? Maybe somehow there were still remnants of his spirit around,
tuned to what people thought within these halls. If so, Matt had just been given a solid whack to the solar plexus, from the way he felt.
Sorry, bud, he thought, almost saying it out loud. I didn’t mean to trash your girl. She’s under a lot of pressure.
Trash his girl?
Trash Elena?
Hell, he’d be the first person to knock out anybody who trashed Elena. Provided Stefan didn’t use vampire tricks to get in front of him!
And what was it Elena always said? You can’t be too prepared. You can’t have too many subplans because, just as sure as God made a pesky shell around a peanut, your major plan was going to have some flaws.
That was why Elena also worked with as many people as possible. So what if C and D workers never needed to get involved. They were there if they were needed.
Thinking this, and with his head feeling a lot clearer than it had since he had sold the Prius and given Stefan’s money to Bonnie and Meredith for plane fare plus, Matt went to work.
“And then we took a walk around the estate, and saw the apple orchard, and the orange orchard, and the cherry orchard,” Bonnie told Elena, who was lying down, looking small and defenseless, in her four-poster bed, which had been hung with dusty-gold sheer panels, right now held back by heavy tassels in various shades of gold.
Bonnie was sitting comfortably in a gold upholstered chair that had been drawn to the bed. She had her small bare feet up on the sheets.
Elena was not being a good patient. She wanted to get up, she insisted. She wanted to be able to walk around. That would do her more good than all the oatmeal and steak and milk and five-times-a-day visits from Dr. Meggar, who had come to live at the estate.
She knew what they were all really afraid of, though. Bonnie had blurted it all out in one long sobbing, keening wail one night when the little redhead had been on duty beside her.
“Y-you screamed and all the v-vampires heard it, and Sage just picked up Meredith and me like two kittens, one under each arm, and he ran to where the screaming was. But b-by then so many people had gotten to you first! You were unconscious but so was Damon, and somebody said, ‘They-they’ve been attacked and I th-think they’re dead!’ And every-b-body was s-saying, ‘Call the G-Guardians!’ And I fainted, a little.”
“Shhh,” Elena had said kindly—and cannily. “Have some Black Magic to make it feel better.”
Bonnie had had some. And some more. And then she’d gone on with the story. “But Sage must’ve known something because he said, ‘Here, I’m a doctor, and I’m going to examine them.’ And you would really believe him, the way he said it!”
“And then he looked at both of you, and I guess he knew right away what happened, because he said, ‘Fetch a carriage! I need to take them t-to Dr. Meggar, my colleague.’ And the Lady Fazina herself came and said that they could have one of her carriages, and just send it back wh-whenever. She’s sooooo rich! And then, we got you two out the back way because there were—were some bastards who said, let them die. They were real demons, white like snow, called Snow Women. And then, then, we were just in the carriage and, oh my God! Elena! Elena, you died! You stopped breathing twice! And Sage and Meredith just kept doing CPR on you. And I—I prayed so h-h-hard.”
Elena, fully into the story by now, had cuddled her, but Bonnie’s tears kept coming back.
“And we knocked at Dr. Meggar’s as if we were going to burst the door in—and—and someone told him—and he examined her and said, ‘She needs a transfusion.’ And I said, ‘Take my blood.’ Because remember in school when we both gave blood to Jody Wright and we were practically the only ones who could do it because we were the same kind? And then Dr. Meggar got two tables ready like that”—Bonnie had snapped her fingers—“and I was so scared I could hardly hold still for the needle, but I did. I did, somehow! And they gave you some of my blood. And, meanwhile, you know what Meredith did? She let Damon bite her. She really did. And Dr. Meggar sent the carriage back to the house to ask for servants who ‘wanted a bonus’ because th-that’s what it’s called here—and the carriage came back full. And I don’t know how many Damon bit, but it was a lot! Dr. Meggar said it was the best medicine. And Meredith and Damon and all of us talked and we convinced Dr. Meggar to come here, I mean to live, and Lady Ulma is going to turn that whole building he was living in into a hospital for the poor people. And ever after that we’ve just been trying to get you well. Damon was fine the next morning. And Lady Ulma and Lucen and he—I mean it was their idea but he did it, sent this pearl to Lady Fazina—it was one that her father had never found a client rich enough to buy, because it’s so big, like a good handful in size but irregular, that means with twists and turns, and a sheen like silver. They put it on a thick chain and sent it to her.”
Bonnie’s eyes had filled again. “Because she saved both you and Damon. Her carriage saved your lives.” Bonnie had leaned forward to whisper, “And Meredith told me—it’s a secret, but not from you—that being bitten isn’t that bad. There!” And Bonnie, like the kitten she was, had yawned and stretched. “I would have been bitten next,” she’d said almost wistfully, and quickly added, “but you needed my blood. Human blood, but mine especially. I guess they know all about blood types here because they can taste and smell the differences.” Then she gave a little jump and said, “Do you want to look at the fox key half? We were so sure it was all over and we’d never ever find it, but when Meredith went in the bedroom to get bitten—and I promise that was all they did—Damon gave it to her and asked her to keep it. So she did and she took good care of it and it’s in a little chest Lucen made out of something that looks like plastic but it’s not.”
Elena had admired the little crescent, but other than that there was nothing to do in bed but talk and read classical books or encyclopedias from Earth. They wouldn’t even let her and Damon rest in the same room.
Elena knew why. They were afraid she wouldn’t just talk to Damon. They were afraid that she would get near to him and smell his exotic familiar smell, made up of Italian bergamot, mandarin, and cardamom, and that she would look up into his black eyes that could hold universes inside the pupils, and that her knees would go weak and she’d wake up a vampire.
They didn’t know anything! She and Damon had been safely exchanging blood for weeks before the crisis. If there was nothing to drive him out of sanity again, the way the pain had before, he would conduct himself like a perfect gentleman.
“Hm,” Bonnie said, upon hearing this protest, pushing a tiny throw pillow around with toenails that had been painted silver. “I maybe wouldn’t tell them that you’ve been exchanging blood so many times from the beginning. It might make them go ‘Aha!’ or something. You know, read something into it.”
“There’s nothing to read into. I’m here to collect my beloved Damon and Stefan is just helping me.”
Bonnie looked at her with her brows knitted and her mouth pursed, but didn’t venture a word.
“Bonnie?”
“Um-hm?”
“Did I just say what I thought I said?”
“Um-hm.”
Elena, with one motion, gathered an armful of pillows and deposited them on her face. “Could you please tell chef that I want another steak and a big glass of milk?” she requested in a muffled voice from under the pillows. “I’m not well.”
Matt had a new junk car. He was always able to get his hands on one when he really needed it. And now he was driving, in fits and starts, to Obaasan’s house.
Mrs. Saitou’s house, he corrected himself hastily. He didn’t want to tread on unfamiliar cultural customs, not when he was asking for a favor.
The door at the Saitous’ was opened by a woman Matt had never seen before. She was an attractive woman, dressed very dramatically in a wide scarlet skirt—or maybe in very wide scarlet pants—she stood with her feet so far apart that it was hard to tell. She wore a white blouse. Her face was striking: two swaths of straight black hair and a smaller, neater swath of bangs that came to her eye
brows.
But the most striking thing of all about her was that she was holding a long curved sword, pointed directly at Matt.
“H-hi,” Matt said, when the door swung open to reveal this apparition.
“This is a good house,” the woman replied. “This is not a house of evil spirits.”
“I never thought it was,” Matt said, retreating as the woman advanced. “Honest.”
The woman shut her eyes, seemed to be searching for something in her own mind. Then, abruptly, she lowered the sword. “You speak the truth. You mean no harm. Please come in.”
“Thank you,” Matt said. He’d never been so happy to have an older woman accept him.
“Orime,” came a thin, feeble voice from upstairs. “Is that one of the children?”
“Yes, Hahawe,” called the woman that Matt couldn’t help thinking of as “the woman with the sword.”
“Send him up, why don’t you?”
“Of course, Hahawe.”
“Ha ha—I mean ‘Hahawe’?” Matt said, turning a nervous laugh into a desperate sentence as the sword swung by his midriff again. “Not Obaasan?”
The sword-woman smiled for the first time. “Obaasan means grandmother. Hahawe is one of the ways to say mother. But mother won’t mind at all if you call her Obaasan; it’s a friendly greeting for a woman of her age.”
“Okay,” Matt said, trying his best to seem like an all-around friendly guy.
Mrs. Saitou gestured him up the stairs and he peeped into several rooms before he found one with a large futon in the exact middle of a completely bare floor, and in it a woman who seemed so tiny and doll-like as not to be real.
Her hair was just as soft and black as the sword-woman’s downstairs. It was put up or arranged somehow so that it lay around her like a halo as she lay on the bed. But the dark lashes on the pale cheeks were shut and Matt wondered if she had fallen into one of the sudden slumbers of the elderly.
